Sidney Lumet's 1976 satire on news and media rocked the Oscars and landed a place in cultural and film history. Faye Dunaway (Best Actress), Peter Finch (Best Actor), Beatrice Straight (Best Supporting Actress) gave life to Paddy Chayefsky's (Best Screenplay) script about the moral decay in Network Television, and its boosting of its ratings by exploiting reality as prime time programming.